The British empire comparison has certain appropriateness considering the large amount of people they exploited and killed, justified by eugenics and racism.
I guess that reminds me that maybe there's some measure of nuance in all of this. The baseball movie Kano which is set during the Taiwanese occupation paints the Japanese imperialists as a civilizing force, modernizing Taiwan for the betterment of its people. Everyone in the film speaks Japanese, but also either Mandarin or Minnan, and the fact that it's about a group of kids competing in the Koshien goes to show how much they want to be seen as Japanese. Maybe there are other people who think Japanese colonization is a good thing.
Meanwhile, Canada was a racist shithole in the 40s, especially for Chinese people. Chinese men kept trying to volunteer for the military, but they weren't allowed to join because the Canadians were afraid that if Chinese served in the military, they would also eventually want the right to vote. It took a British officer who saw the usefulness of having Chinese soldiers operate in China and Burma in order to force Canada to commission Chinese soldiers. So in a small way, British imperialism is responsible for Chinese enfranchisement in Canada.
I don't know... I'm sure the film isn't trying to raise any of these issues whatsoever. lol
I think there's a huge difference though. The Wind Rises was absolutely an anti-war film, with a clear bias in the narrative. Miyazaki isn't that interested in nuance or just showing instead of telling. While many characters in the film are neutral, there's always someone or something in the story pointing the audience in the direction that WAR IS BAD and ANYONE WHO DOESN'T SEE HOW WAR IS BAD IS KINDA DUMB Y'KNOW, etc.'
This film doesn't do that at all. It lets the audience see how people lived in that era, and draw our own conclusions about what was good, what was bad, and beyond that, just to understand more about another time and another place.
I think In This Corner has a clear anti-war message but on a very localized level. We don't see any mention of the Japanese empire outside of
Taiwanese rice being available at the black market
, there's no mention of the fact that Japan started the war, or the fact that they were allied with Nazis (the ultimate villains).
The anti-war stuff is seen through Suzu's quiet suffering and the effect that decisions made by the military has on her. Like I think you could easily take the template of this story and make a movie about an American mom who loses her son because of the Iraq War and how she's caught between American patriotism and the reality that her President has failed her and gotten her child killed (hell, I'm sure that movie already exists). I think that's the universal aspect of the film that makes it relatable outside of the political and historical context, but I guess the question is whether or not it's problematic that the film just assumes we know the bigger picture and makes no overt comments about it either way.
I guess that reminds me that maybe there's some measure of nuance in all of this. The baseball movie Kano which is set during the Taiwanese occupation paints the Japanese imperialists as a civilizing force, modernizing Taiwan for the betterment of its people. Everyone in the film speaks Japanese, but also either Mandarin or Minnan, and the fact that it's about a group of kids competing in the Koshien goes to show how much they want to be seen as Japanese. Maybe there are other people who think Japanese colonization is a good thing.
Meanwhile, Canada was a racist shithole in the 40s, especially for Chinese people. Chinese men kept trying to volunteer for the military, but they weren't allowed to join because the Canadians were afraid that if Chinese served in the military, they would also eventually want the right to vote. It took a British officer who saw the usefulness of having Chinese soldiers operate in China and Burma in order to force Canada to commission Chinese soldiers. So in a small way, British imperialism is responsible for Chinese enfranchisement in Canada.
I don't know... I'm sure the film isn't trying to raise any of these issues whatsoever. lol
This season basically sets a foothold for the characters and the idol industry and touches on the work culture but it largely feels like there's little of value you got out of it besides a few sequences. The narrative shift in the next season(teased by the end of the first season with a new character) gives it a more focused and juicy character driven story telling so there's much to take apart in each of them, I'm pretty interested to see how you'll feel.
I thoroughly enjoyed episodes one, three, and seven as well as parts of other episodes. However, the rest of the content just reinforces the fact that the extended cast of characters are paper-thin and half-baked despite their flair. Dedicating an ample amount of time on the static appeal of those characters has made the work feel very regulated to fulfilling that commitment. Most of the characters are just not very interesting, superficially or otherwise.
I'm looking forward to when the overarching thread surfaces and fully realizes the Cinderella motif. Although the narrative pieces were sparse and scattered among the fluff, they did seem promising. It's been an entertaining enough show despite the cluttered material. Also, I appreciate that the nature of business has been incorporated to an extent, albeit streamlined.
I think In This Corner has a clear anti-war message but on a very localized level. We don't see any mention of the Japanese empire outside of
Taiwanese rice being available at the black market
, there's no mention of the fact that Japan started the war, or the fact that they were allied with Nazis (the ultimate villains).
The anti-war stuff is seen through Suzu's quiet suffering and the effect that decisions made by the military has on her. Like I think you could easily take the template of this story and make a movie about an American mom who loses her son because of the Iraq War and how she's caught between American patriotism and the reality that her President has failed her and gotten her child killed (hell, I'm sure that movie already exists). I think that's the universal aspect of the film that makes it relatable outside of the political and historical context, but I guess the question is whether or not it's problematic that the film just assumes we know the bigger picture and makes no overt comments about it either way.
Sorry I didn't mean that in a general "war is bad" way, but The Wind Rises has a very clear anti-WW2 message where it is filled with Japanese guilt over being involved in a Very Bad Thing and willful ignorance being a mentality that fed into Japan's militarization and nationalism even though it was all Clearly Bad. It is something Corner never does, and yet it is not ignoring the reality of Japan's fault in the war but rather putting the audience entirely in the immersed mindset of what it is like to be someone in that time and place. It is so much more harrowing seeing people act totally happy and positive about such a bad thing and going about their daily lives, yet this is the reality, while Miyazaki's vision is very much a retrospect. Much like how Kaguyahime was an adaptation that placed the mentality of a modern woman in the period setting.
Sorry I didn't mean that in a general "war is bad" way, but The Wind Rises has a very clear anti-WW2 message where it is filled with Japanese guilt over being involved in a Very Bad Thing and willful ignorance being a mentality that fed into Japan's militarization and nationalism even though it was all Clearly Bad. It is something Corner never does, and yet it is not ignoring the reality of Japan's fault in the war but rather putting the audience entirely in the immersed mindset of what it is like to be someone in that time and place. It is so much more harrowing seeing people act totally happy and positive about such a bad thing and going about their daily lives, yet this is the reality, while Miyazaki's vision is very much a retrospect. Much like how Kaguyahime was an adaptation that placed the mentality of a modern woman in the period setting.
But it's very much contextualized for a modern audience though, because it's counting down to the bomb, and because of all the small things that show us the war effort is being shut down (like mentioning the absence of carriers in port, to the explicit sinking of the Yamato). There's a clear dramatic irony going on, which is part of the tension that the film is trying to create.
Especially when Suzu says she wants to go back to Hiroshima.
The most explicit thing that Suzu does is
condemn violence. And maybe there's ambiguity there because she could be condemning the American bombings,
or less likely, she could be condemning the Japanese government. I guess in some way, "America" is this film's "Godzilla", an unrelenting force that constantly threatens and terrorizes the local population. But most of that is subtext,
because it feels like the film tries holding back about addressing the war itself.
Oh yeah,
I guess the part where Suzu says she's going to use the American leaflets as toilet paper is the most nationalistic the film gets.
Action Heroine Cheer fruits ep1
a show about a group of girls trying to save their town by putting on tokusatsu shows in a park with badly made and improvised cardboard costumes and effects? sign me the fuck up, this show is awesome.
Half-joking aside, Acraprypha as a source material is just not that good. afaik it's essentially the worst of Fanfiction.net combined with scrapped ideas for the original FSN.
Made In Abyss - 07
Yep. Looks like progress is going to be halted for a while now. The revelation about the box, though was pretty damn shocking.
Princess Principal - 07
While it's nice seeing the show experiment with its ideas and play around with the formula, it just didn't have the impact of last week's Dorothy-focused episode.
And how the hell does nobody recognize Princess going undercover?
I enjoy the characters on this, but unfortunately, everything else seems to be really underwhelming. The first episode shows some promise about the animation and the battles, the intro was really damn cool, but so far, nothing has come even close to that and the show is already close to the end of its first third. I hope they won't reuse that footage on the climax, because that would be lazy. Also, the story so far seems to go nowhere out of its original premise. Jeanne has literally done nothing.
Action Heroine Cheer fruits ep1
a show about a group of girls trying to save their town by putting on tokusatsu shows in a park with badly made and improvised cardboard costumes and effects? sign me the fuck up, this show is awesome.
I'm actually enjoying Fate/Apocrypha quite a bit, not sure why everyone is so down on it. The set up with the two opposing factions is interesting, the episodes have a good flow to them and usually offer a nice action setpiece (contrary to something like Re:Creators where most episodes devolve into mindnumbing conversations which repeat the same points over and over and don't even compensate by offering interesting visuals).
I also don't think the animation is that bad. The quieter scenes can look a bit janky at times but the action scenes always offer some cool and well made action animation and are often highly kinetic. Episode 8 is a good example of this with the confrontation between Karna and Vlad. The scene is relatively short but there's almost zero downtime and every action feels impactful. It can be a bit messy at times but it has a lot of energy. It's obviously not as polished as UBW, but honestly I am kind of sick of their heavy digital post processing.
The OST is also really good and fits the setting of mythical heroes from ancient times really well (it's just that some tracks are overused). The sound design is iffy though with the strange decision to heavily distort a lot of the sound effects. I guess the servants are so powerful that there shear presence corrupts audio encodings? It's pretty silly.
The biggest problem right now is that the cast is just so big that a lot of the players still feel underdeveloped. There's still two thirds to go though and I'm sure Jeanne will come into play eventually.
The show is also too anime at times, especially with stuff like loli Jack the Ripper and Black Rider's SM Master. I can look past that stuff but it might be too much for some people.
I think most people who liked Re:Creators last two episodes will find some enjoyment here.
The three catgirl sisters continue to be the highlight of the show. Episode also solved the important question of how a Centaur would put on pants/bathing suit.
Because everyone in this thread is a deep thinker with sharp critical analysis skills. There's no place for enjoying anything that's less than perfection in artistic expression. We constantly look down on anyone who even dares to just have fun with subpar works because it lowers the high elitist barrier that must be upheld to keep the unwashed masses from tainting the appreciation of true art.
I thoroughly enjoyed episodes one, three, and seven as well as parts of other episodes. However, the rest of the content just reinforces the fact that the extended cast of characters are paper-thin and half-baked despite their flair. Dedicating an ample amount of time on the static appeal of those characters has made the work feel very regulated to fulfilling that commitment. Most of the characters are just not very interesting, superficially or otherwise.
I'm looking forward to when the overarching thread surfaces and fully realizes the Cinderella motif. Although the narrative pieces were sparse and scattered among the fluff, they did seem promising. It's been an entertaining enough show despite the cluttered material. Also, I appreciate that the nature of business has been incorporated to an extent, albeit streamlined.
On the one hand, I like the general premise. The idea of a large scale conflict with over a dozen Servants is a fun idea for a Fate spinoff. It helps that there's a number of interesting characters on all sides of the conflict, and the dynamics of these teams (both between Masters and Servants) is really interesting and make the two sides feel remarkably distinct. And I'd be lying if I said that getting to see multiple Servants engaging in combat at once wasn't entertaining and a nice change from the usual duel-style fights you normally see in Fate stories.
On the other hand, I think that for being a third of the way through the show, the cast is too large right now and lots of people feel terribly underdeveloped; Jeanne being the most obvious, but a lot of characters on the Red side apart from Mordred and her master just haven't had enough screentime. This specific adaptation also glosses over a lot of particulars about the Fate universe to keep the show's pacing from dragging, which feels like the right decisio but it makes the show somewhat impenetrable for newcomers. And this might seem petty, but while I enjoy the fights even if they don't have the same kind of spectacle as ufotable's, the environmental art for those fights has been incredibly dull (dark forest, dark plain, dark non-descript alleyway, etc.). It makes it hard for Trifas (and Transylvania in general) to have the same sense of place that Fuyuki did in Zero and UBW (that probably has something to do with Apocrypha being a LN where as F/SN and Zero were VNs).
I'm still enjoying watching Apocrypha, but I am a disappointed by it in some respects. I can only hope this gradual start will have some significant payoff before the end of the first cour.
Because everyone in this thread is a deep thinker with sharp critical analysis skills. There's no place for enjoying anything that's less than perfection in artistic expression. We constantly look down on anyone who even dares to just have fun with subpar works because it lowers the high elitist barrier that must be upheld to keep the unwashed masses from tainting the appreciation of true art.
In This Corner of the World was very good. I'm glad I went to see it in theaters instead of waiting for the Blu-ray, since I don't think the more powerful scenes would have had as much of an impact otherwise.
It helped that the audience actually stayed quiet through most of the movie as well.
I dont understand the last line, people stayed quiet in all movies I saw that werent marvel movies on release night, is it common for people to not be quiet during anime movies? Ive only seen YGO DD and SAO Ordinal Scale in theaters .
Watching the Kizu movies with an audience was fantastic. Stuff like the 2001 reference or the entire Hanekawa x Araragi sequence in the third part wouldn't be the same without the entire audience completely losing it.
Just came back from Kitacon. Pretty exhausted. Will post loot later and actually I haven't done this in a while so I'll get together all the stuff I've got off recent cons I guess.
On the one hand, I like the general premise. The idea of a large scale conflict with over a dozen Servants is a fun idea for a Fate spinoff. It helps that there's a number of interesting characters on all sides of the conflict, and the dynamics of these teams (both between Masters and Servants) is really interesting and make the two sides feel remarkably distinct. And I'd be lying if I said that getting to see multiple Servants engaging in combat at once wasn't entertaining and a nice change from the usual duel-style fights you normally see in Fate stories.
On the other hand, I think that for being a third of the way through the show, the cast is too large right now and lots of people feel terribly underdeveloped; Jeanne being the most obvious, but a lot of characters on the Red side apart from Mordred and her master just haven't had enough screentime. This specific adaptation also glosses over a lot of particulars about the Fate universe to keep the show's pacing from dragging, which feels like the right decisio but it makes the show somewhat impenetrable for newcomers. And this might seem petty, but while I enjoy the fights even if they don't have the same kind of spectacle as ufotable's, the environmental art for those fights has been incredibly dull (dark forest, dark plain, dark non-descript alleyway, etc.). It makes it hard for Trifas (and Transylvania in general) to have the same sense of place that Fuyuki did in Zero and UBW (that probably has something to do with Apocrypha being a LN where as F/SN and Zero were VNs).
I'm still enjoying watching Apocrypha, but I am a disappointed by it in some respects. I can only hope this gradual start will have some significant payoff before the end of the first cour.
Zero was a set of prose novels (not sure if it was a light-novel imprint - I seem to remember it might have initially been event-sales only) rather than a Visual Novel, though arguably it benefits from the setting work established in F/SN. Then again, with the way that Type-Moon historically presented their games, I'm not sure it's that big of an advantage beyond not having an editor force Nasu to cull unnecessary excess.
